


Something Old, Something New

by emmagrace13



Category: Andi Mack (TV)
Genre: Bar & Bat Mitzvah, Crushes, Fluff, Friendship, Light Jealousy, Love, M/M, Revelations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 11:10:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16173872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmagrace13/pseuds/emmagrace13
Summary: When Cyrus finds himself unable to open a bottle of Martinelli's Sparkling Cider at his bar mitzvah, a certain basketball player comes to his rescue.





	Something Old, Something New

**Author's Note:**

> Request by anonymous: deleted bar mitzvah scene
> 
> Alternative title: "Sparkling Apple Cy-der" (which is a billion times better than "Hava Na-Gay-La", but still invalid Jay!).
> 
> This is my version of the deleted bar mitzvah scene, and I managed to get it as close to canon as humanly possible with the information I've been given. I hope you enjoy!

Cyrus Goodman felt like he was on top of the world.

The flashing lights and the roaring music pumped throughout the room, setting the mood for the fast-paced, overwhelming evening to come.  The party was in full swing with guests clambering about in a festive rage, and the multitude of partygoers resembled ants in Cyrus’s eyes as looked down at them with a flushed smile.  Most of them had started to surround him, crowding around the edges of the dance stage in the fervorous celebration to exchange hoots and hollers as he was heaved and boosted up into the air during the hora.   _ His _ hora.  

Cyrus absolutely loved it.  

Outside of the glamour and thrill of his spectacular day, Cyrus often felt invisible to the people surrounding him (and when his four shrink parents were constantly telling him how he was hiding in the shadows, it was hard  _ not _ to feel that way).  Sometimes he even felt like the overlooked person in his friend group (not that he  _ minded _ hearing about Andi and her Jonah problems, even though he had the same crush, but  _ honestly! _  He was  _ fine! _ ) But this day was all his!  It was  _ his _ bar mitzvah, and Cyrus could do anything he pleased.  He could dance to music  _ he liked, _ and talk to people  _ he liked, _ and invite people  _ he liked. _

Maybe that was what had spurred him to invite T.J. Kippen, after all.  

He then found himself searching for the boy in question, wondering if he had come after all, and his eyes wove through the crowd only to discover the brooding basketball player conversing with his best friend Buffy Driscoll.  His stomach whirred uneasily; somehow he had a feeling that their conversation  _ wasn’t _ going too well.  While he was still working on his lip-reading skills, Cyrus had latched onto body language tells a lot faster, and from what he could tell, Buffy’s tightly drawn back shoulders and tense movements didn’t look like she approved of T.J.’s presence here.

Why hadn’t she just  _ told _ him she didn’t want T.J. there?  He had asked her, after all.

Cyrus almost leaned forward to observe the situation more closely, but he lurched forward unexpectedly in his seat midair, and he felt his heart race.   _ I could’ve died! _  How had he forgotten that he was being held up in the air by four men?  He couldn’t believe that his spying had nearly gotten him  _ killed! _  Cyrus certainly felt like James Bond now, constantly facing death on his hot pursuits, and he had just stared his own (almost) demise in the face!

After regaining his sanity (but did he really have any to begin with?), Cyrus allowed himself to be recaptured by the allure of the occasion, drinking in the atmosphere of the party with curious, astounded eyes.  How he wished every day could be his bar mitzvah!

Once the hora was finally done and Cyrus was guided back to the safe and solid ground, he stumbled to the banquet table, yearning to suppress the sudden cloudiness in his mind and the wobbling of his legs.  He reached for a viridescent bottle, taking in the white label with the familiar  _ Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider _ calligraphy illustrated carefully in fancy red lettering with eager eyes, and he scrambled to scratch the aluminum off of the bottle of cider, the parched patch on his tongue suddenly feeling more and more like desert sand with each passing second.  Cyrus tossed the ivory foil aside, it’s pliable surface crumbling underneath his hurried touch, and he fumbled for the lid. However, when he went to twist the cap off, praying the cider would relinquish the urgent thirst in his body, the lid refused to budge against his (albeit,  _ delicate _ ) touch.  Why wouldn’t it  _ open _ ?

Cyrus tried again and twisted it with more force, but the lid remained static, the gold metal taunting him with its haughty gleam.  He even tried to pry it open with the lip of the table, wedging the crevice of the bottle lid underneath the sharp ridge and pulling with all his might.  His face contorted into pain as he struggled to open the cider, and he eventually heaved against the table, his faux confidence deflating. Cyrus had allowed the atmosphere of the party to delude him into having the illusion of confidence, but all of that was crumbling before his eyes.  He couldn’t even get a bottle open for Pete’s sake!

Cyrus removed the cider from underneath the table edge with a rough yank, causing the liquid to bubble up and rise to the neck of the bottle in a frothy amber foam, and he turned the olive bottle over and over in his hands as a dispirited sigh escaped from his lips.  He couldn’t help but feel a pang of loneliness go through his chest at his own failure, a cold feeling sweeping through him and seizing his heart with its firm, frigid grip. Where were his friends he needed them? 

The last he had seen, Andi was off sulking about her and Jonah ‘breaking up’ (although had they really ever been together?) and Buffy had been talking (rather angrily, he might add) to T.J.  His eyes roamed and searched for where he had last seen his best friend, but she was nowhere to be found, as was the basketball player. Had they just vanished into thin air?

He wished at least Buffy were there beside him.  She’d be able to get the bottle open  _ for sure,  _ and would save him the embarrassment at his own bar mitzvah.  He’d owe her for life!

Just as he was about to go scout for Buffy so that she could open the bottle for him (and so he could suppress the sudden feeling of loneliness that was nagging at him), a familiar presence materialized in his peripheral vision, and Cyrus glanced up, clutching the bottle of cider against his ribcage in surprise.  “Not-So-Scary Basketball Guy!” Cyrus shouted, managing to be heard over the loud thrum of beat bass. A wide smile crossed the shorter boy’s face. “You made it!” Of course he had already  _ known _ T.J. had arrived, but to see him up-close in his well-fitting, tailored suit made it all the more surreal.  

A beam tugged itself onto the corners of T.J.’s lips, and a warm, fuzzy feeling flooded Cyrus’s belly.  “I did say I’d be here, didn’t I?” the taller boy said, his tone managing to convey his dry humor and amusement all at once.  Cyrus’s beam never wavered from his face. With T.J., a grin always seemed to be playing at the edge of his lips. The boy’s company somehow always managed to bring out his rarest of smiles.   _ Weird _ .  

“I know you did.  I’m glad you came,” Cyrus told the boy, his gratitude underlying his voice.  He hoped T.J. knew how much his presence at his bar mitzvah meant to him. For whatever reason, he was drawn to T.J. (their unusual friendship was the most unexpected friend pairing to ever exist, and yet here they were!), and he wanted to keep their bond alive.  He had no clue why T.J. wanted to be friends with  _ him _ (T.J.  _ was _ the captain of the basketball team, after all), and yet Cyrus found the basketball player reciprocating their amity.   

Just thinking about it all made his head spin.

A smile bloomed out onto T.J.’s face, which was an expression Cyrus never would’ve guessed the boy was capable of making a mere month ago.  But he was making it now, and it was because of something  _ Cyrus _ had said.  It made Cyrus’s face warm, and he wondered if the color on his cheeks was due to the stifling heat of the building or something else.

He blamed it on the humidity of the room, not wanting to contemplate the implications of it any further.  He did  _ not _ need to get in a Jonah Beck situation.  Especially because he wasn’t even  _ over _ Jonah Beck yet.  

“I’m glad I came, too,” T.J. said, and Cyrus’s previous thoughts about not wanting to crush on T.J. immediately flew out the window when he felt his heart pound against his ribs.   _ Oh, no. _

Cyrus choked down his sudden admiration for the boy with a forced swallow, although his throat was still  _ unbearingly _ bone dry.  _  Why won’t the bottle just  _ open _?  _ Cyrus asked himself, completely forlorn.  He cast the cider a vengeful look, willing the lid to pop off, but it remained just as motionless as it had been all evening.   _ Figures _ , he thought, sighing internally.  

He turned his attention back to T.J., who was  _ still _ smiling, and a spiral of butterflies unleashed themselves into his stomach.   _ Just my luck,  _ he thought bitterly.   _ Now I’m starting to like T.J. Kippen, too. _  He shoved his feelings to the back of his mind (where they belonged!), and spoke to resolve any awkward tension hanging in the air.  “So, are you having a good time?” He was  _ ever _ the hospitable host.

T.J.’s head swiveled to the hoard of people crowded around the dance floor, and Cyrus followed his line of sight to find who T.J. was looking at: Buffy.  

A sour expression crossed the basketball player’s face momentarily, and Cyrus remembered witnessing Buffy and T.J.’s seemingly tense conversation from afar during the hora.   He wondered what had happened between the two when they had talked, but just as he opened his mouth to ask, T.J. turned back to face him. Once he met Cyrus’s gaze again, his grimaced features melted into one of indifference, and he let a frustrated, yet sad, sigh spill from his lips.  “I actually just got here, but, yeah, it seems really cool.”

Cyrus felt his mood lift at his words.  “It is! You should totally check out some of the stuff my mom rented, like the caricature artist, or the fortune teller!  They seem to be big hits so far,” Cyrus informed him with an especially exuberant smile. The ones that only T.J. seemed to get out of him. 

_ Stop,  _ he reminded himself.  It had always been a constant mantra in his head with Jonah, but with T.J. now, too?  What had life come to?

T.J. mirrored his jaunty expression with a beam of his own and let out a silent laugh through his nose, mirth dancing in his eyes.  “What? I assure you this will be the best bar mitzvah you’ll ever go to,” Cyrus told him, intense urgency cutting through his voice, and T.J. let out another amused huff.  

“You’re right, Underdog,” he said, humoring the boy.  “I’ll check out the fortune teller and  _ whatever _ the other thing is.”

“Caricature artist,” Cyrus reminded him gently.  

“Yeah, that.”  They shared a smile (that lingered a  _ little _ too long to be friendly) before T.J.’s gaze shifted to the glass bottle clenched in Cyrus’s hand.  “What’s that you got there?”

Cyrus followed his line of sight only to see the cider in his grasp, and he lifted it up sheepishly, the purple and pink flashing lights catching the glass to make a brilliant kaleidoscope.  “Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider,” he explained. “I can’t get it open, though,” he elaborated, a hint of embarrassment lining his voice. He tugged on it for dramatic effect and, to no one’s surprise, the bottle remained motionless under his exaggerated movements (just to spite him, Cyrus was convinced!).

T.J. gestured with open palms, making a waving motion with his hand.  “Here, I can help you with that if you want?” he offered, and it made something unexpected (but not entirely  _ unwelcome  _ either) blaze in Cyrus’s stomach, like a fire dancing in his belly, and his heart nagged at him to hand it over to the boy.  He gave a little nod to the basketball player, and an adoring smile threatened to tug on the corners of his lips as he handed the cider over to T.J.  The basketball player eyed the (vicious, Cyrus thought) bottle for a moment with a calculating arch of his brow before sticking the slot underneath the ridge of the table.

“I’m just warning you, it’s tough to get open—” Cyrus tried to warn, but before the words have even fully left his mouth, a muffled  _ pop _ emitted from the basketball player, and cider sloshed down the sides of the bottle.  T.J. hurriedly bunched up a horde of abandoned napkins from the banquet table and soaked up the cider dribbling from the bottle and onto the floor with rushed movements.  Cyrus observed the whole affair in wonderment, his eyes wide and glittering with admiration for the basketball player next to him. He really was an athlete with boundless confidence (and he liked that T.J. helped him gain some of his own)!  

Cyrus couldn’t believe he ever thought this muffin obtaining, playground swinging, bottle opening, basketball playing boy was scary.  

“Here,” T.J. said, handing the (now dry) bottle of Martinelli’s back to Cyrus.  “I only opened it halfway for you.” And if those words didn’t make Cyrus’s heart melt, he didn’t know what would.  He felt like he could burst into a million sunbeams right now and he’d die happy. “Now try it.”

Cyrus, with a wide beam on his face, trained his eyes on the stubborn lid of the bottle and glanced at T.J. for reassurement.  The basketball player nodded encouragingly, and Cyrus used his newfound confidence to pry the bottle cap the rest of the way off.  After one last tug, Cyrus managed to crack the lid off with a resounding  _ pop _ , and a stream of foam and cider ruptured from the neck of the bottle, causing a cascade of cider and foam to gush down the sides of the olive glass (and onto Cyrus’s shoes, unfortunately).  Cyrus jumped up in shock and, with incredulity dancing in his eyes, turned to beside him where T.J. had been.

“I did it!” he exclaimed to the space beside him, but his smile dropped slightly when he discovered the basketball player was nowhere to be found.  Where had T.J. gone?

Meanwhile, the commotion had garnered the attention of the partygoers, and many of them started to crowd Cyrus with hollers and cheers of excitement.  His father came up to him and patted him on the back, mirroring his delirious beam, and Cyrus accepted everyone’s praise with his winning charismatic smile, but his eyes were elsewhere, searching the crowd beyond for the basketball player.  He finally recognized the back of the boy’s familiar chestnut gelled hair from afar, and T.J., almost as if he had sensed his gaze, turned to look back at the shorter boy. He gave Cyrus a deliberate wink and a fond smile crossed his lips before he whirled back around, heading outside.

As Cyrus accepted pats on the back and reaped validation from his guests, he couldn’t help the knowing smile that ghosted his lips and the flush that highlighted his cheeks from illuminating his face.   _ You think you know someone,  _ Cyrus thought to himself, an exhilarated glow about him.  Maybe there was even more to the basketball player than he thought…

* * *

 

Later, when Cyrus found himself doing an amusing little jig along his best friend Buffy, a familiar (admittedly cute) presence entered his peripheral vision, and Cyrus felt comforted by the boy’s presence.  Jonah Beck was a human  _ sunbeam _ .  It was hard  _ not _ to feel happy around him.  However, that comforting feeling immediately dissolved when saw the flickering jealousy on Jonah’s face, and he prepared himself for the tug of envy that he was well accustomed to.  However, instead of a biting feeling contorting his stomach, he felt a faint twinge pierce his heart alternatively. The jealous feeling was still present, no doubt about it, but it felt almost...muted somehow.  Like his heart wasn’t entirely in it.

Cyrus refused to think twice about it at his party.  His conflicting feelings about Jonah Beck were left for the late hours of the night where he could contemplate his darkest, most inner thoughts in peace.

“Hey!  Who’s that guy dancing with Andi?” Jonah asked, his voice on the verge of panicking.  Wondering why Jonah was so frantic, Cyrus’s eyes hurriedly raked through the crowd, and he found his best friend and her newfound beau, swaying animatedly to the upbeat melody blasting through the speakers on the congested dance floor.  

Cyrus squinted through the flashing lights to try and make out a face.  “Oh, that’s uh—” he finally focused in on the boy, but didn’t recognize him, “—no idea!” he finished, confused.  Jonah huffed and moved on to Buffy, interrogating her next. Cyrus felt that indistinct ache go through him again, but it didn’t completely overwhelm his senses, didn’t flood through his veins, making him see red behind his eyelids.  It was just a fleeting moment, and then the next second it was gone, as short-lived as a shooting star. A brilliant flash of white before it vanished into the dark.

After Jonah left, Cyrus found solace in the steady thrum of the music, and he continued to jump and dance next to Buffy, although his mind wandered beyond the buzz of the guests and back to just a few months ago, all the way back to the Space Otters’ party.  He remembered how sick and nauseated he felt back then, his stomach flipping over in jealousy over the fact that Andi and Jonah were ‘getting together’. It had left a bitter, almost copper-like taste in his mouth, and he remembered the rest of the evening had a melancholy filter to it; everything he saw and touched felt desolate and dismal,  _ lifeless _ .  Now, though, he didn’t find himself moping around over the Frisbee player, didn’t catch himself praying that Jonah would cast him a glance.  Instead of sulking like he would have, he was having fun with Buffy, who was his ever supportive best friend, his rock. He had Andi, who, even though she had just found out about Cyrus liking Jonah, still reminded him that he was  _ no  _ different.  He cast a longing glance at the entrance of the building, a smile ghosting his lips.  And yeah, maybe he had T.J. now, too.

What more could he ask for?

**Author's Note:**

> My amazing friend Di (@spaceottersart on Tumblr) posted a piece of art for this fanfiction [here](https://spaceottersart.tumblr.com/post/178684383004/something-old-something-new). Make sure to check it out because she's talented and it's amazing! Also don't forget to vote for me on Andi Mack Blog Nominations (@cyrusgoodboye) if you want, and also check out the Andi Mack Mini Bang hosted by me and Di! Check out @andimackminibang for more details!


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